Actually, if you went from 9 to 6.65 in two minutes that is pretty good . What I would do is go to www.capitalone.com and apply for a refinance right away. If you got 6.65, they will likely approve you for a refinance at 6 or under (remember you went down from 9 to 6.65 in two minutes) and give you a new loan in about two to three weeks. No need to wait.

If you want to do even better than that, wait 1 year and then refinance with your bank or CU.

Congrats on getting the deal down that far on your first try. Car buying is not fun until you get the car. I am now convinced that before any new car purchase, I will have a loan already lined up from my bank or CU before even walking in a showroom.

 

BTW, Post pics of your RX-8.... AND HAVE FUN!!!

James

 

EsCoBaR1, congrats! Dropping from 9 to 6.65 (with lower payments) is good. The dealership was unable to "screw you" like they had originally planned. I'm sure they made money on the deal.

As others said before, they'd rather sell the car at a smaller profit then take it as a return due to a financing issue!

and definatly, have fun with your car.. I love my RX-8.. I like my dealership... I just hate the dealership financing games...

 

AGHHGH They just called me saying i need the original copy of the gerber rebate. I dont have it and they said they i should of received a post card from Gerber. All i told him was i could fax him the newspaper ad (I think i saw the ad here on another thread before)not sure and that the other dealerships told me that all i had to do was get online and apply, he said he spoke with the corporate office and said that i need a post card sent throught the mail. If they tell me it wont work im giving them the keys

 

WTF....You mentioned that you didn't get the rebate. If you have a contract signed, you are good to go, end of story. Why don't you take 1/2 a day, go to your bank, refinance the darn thing, cancel the orignal contract, and find another dealership for your service.

Seriously dude, you are going throuogh too much for something that should be rather painless. In the end, it is your money, your time, and your car. I urge to go either call Capital One or go to the bank and get it done. It is worth the 1/2 of day of effort just to get the finance guy off your back and cut him out of the picture. If it was me, I be insanely ... .

Good luck.

 

BTW, Capital One is offering 4.49% from Captial One on new cars. www.capitalone.com

Just do it....

James

 

Yeah no **** with $7500 down at 60 months you should be getting around %5. I paid %5.25 for 60 mo with $0 down. My wife and I have credit scores in the 700's so I know that is part of it but hell with that kind of cash down you are definitely in an equity position.

 

Capitalone.com refinance rate is 6.69% up to 60mos and 7.49% up to 72 mos.

The 4.49% is for new dealer car purchase and only for up to 36mos.

 

Well, it DOES say that right on the Gerber certificate - bring the original card with you to the dealership. If you look in the Gerber threads here I posted links to hi-rez images of my Gerber card. You could print that out and try faxing it to them. If that will not work, someone reported to me (privately) that they had it printed double sided on 5x7 card glossy card stock with a thin white border and the dealer took it w/o a problem. I don't know how much it would cost to have a pro print it, but I GUARANTEE it is a LOT less than the $500 value of the card :D

Of course, you can always e-mail or call Gerber and ask them to send you the card - that has been known to work many times.

Dennis

 

^^Yea ive tried i still cant seem to have it printed out right but i should just call.

Does this 4.49 rate all depend on your credit score b/c i really cant keep letting anyone pull up my credit, the finance guy showed me how many times other dealerships were pulling up my credit and how its really affecting my score.....it was about 6 times (And i had no idea about this, i was just aware of 3), i think i might have to chill out until i can get all those points back. The dealerships prollly gon take that away from my downpayment jus like the mac rebate...im just goin to have to pick up my $6,000 dollar check from them and leave

 

Yes - they use a tier credit system. 4.9% might be the top tier rate and "not all buyers will qualify" as they say on the TV ads. Dealers DO mark up the rates for extra money, but you really can't know by how much unless you KNOW you are in the top tier.

The dealer will not get their money back from Mazda/Gerber if they don't have the proper card (I have been told) so it is really not up to them. BTW, I think that cat is way out of the bag now. Back a few months ago you could have gotten the $500 easy as pie, now "they" seem to know this spread around the Internet. If you go to the other Mazda car forums (like the Mazda 3 forums) they are talking about it there too.

Dennis

 

My suggestion is to call your bank or Capital one and simply tell them your story. Then the rep should be able to tell you what you may be able to do.

I had my CR pulled 8 times by Mini (found out after the fact) and still go immedate approval from three different banks for the RX-8 at Car Max.

Your score does go down when a CR is pulled, but only by 5 points.

The tier system is roughly as follows ...

750+ Tier 1 (less than 5% risk of default) TOP CREDIT ... almost no one has this
690-750 Tier 2 (5-15% risk of default) GOOD CREDIT
620-690 Tier 3 (16-31% risk of default) DECENT CREDIT (can be trusted but you wont get the best rate)
550-620 Tier 4 (31-50% risk of default) BAD CREDIT (may need cosigner, etc)
below 550 Tier 5 (over 50% risk of default) BOTTOM CREDIT (interest rates in the 20s and lots down before even considering a loan).

Also, you may not have a score (NO CREDIT). In these situations, a cosigner with at least tier 3 credit is needed for a loan.

There is a max (forgot what that is) that your score will drop for CR and it quickly recovers once you get approved for a loan.

 

Follow-up on FICO credit scores and inquries from Equifax.com....
DIRECTLY FROM EQUIFAX WEBSITE...


An inquiry is a notation on your credit report showing what businesses (usually lenders) have requested to view your report. Your credit report includes two types of inquiries:

Involuntary inquires occur when lenders search for consumers that might qualify for pre-approved credit offers they send in the mail, and when consumers check their own credit reports. The inquiry posted for this request is also involuntary. The FICO score does not consider these types of inquiries, nor do lenders see these inquiries when reviewing your credit report.

Voluntary inquiries result from your own requests for credit. This commonly occurs when you apply for a loan and authorize the lender to review a copy of your credit report.
FICO scores only consider the voluntary inquiries listed on your credit report from the past twelve months.These include mortgage, credit card, auto loan and other requests for credit you may have made. FICO scores are engineered so that your score is not lowered from the multiple inquiries that may occur when you shop for the best auto or home loan.

A single inquiry will usually have little impact on your score


SUMMARY:

1. This means that your score is impacted very little when inquries are made for credit.
2. Multiple inquries for the SAME purchase do NOT count more than a single inquiry.

In other words, the dealership finance guy is blowing more smoke trying to get you to take their loan. Go and get it refianced ASAP.

 

I urge all car buyers to forget about interest rate until you have come to an acceptable PRICE of the veihcle.

Financing interest rate is absolutely not important unless you completely has no credit score(see footnote #1). Couple of reasons for that, 1)assuming you finance $30k, the monthly payment won't vary more than $40 a month with either 5% or 8% interest. If you definitely cannot afford the extra $40 a month, you simply should not own a medium price car in the $30k range. 2) competitive interest rate comes from everywhere, so if you think 8% or 9% is too high, you can always refinance it or just pay it off with your parent's or your own home equity line. The equity line money is great because you can also take tax deduction. Because of these two reasons, there is no point to get too crazy on interest rate in the dealership.

The dealer can give you a low monthly payment, but you really don't know whether you get a good deal or not until you figure out the % and $ of the car. Example: a payment of $400/month on a $20k 60 month financing, the interest rate comes to 7.9%. The interest rate seems a little high, right? So how about the dealer shows you your interest rate is 5% and with $385 a month? obviously it doesn't make the deal any sweeter because now you are screwed by the price. 5% w/ $385/mos, the price comes to $20,486. You are paying $486 more on the principal which will compound for the next 60 months, so you end up losing more. Even not considering the compounding, $486 divided by the $15 saving per month, you still need 32 months to recoup the $486 extra.

All the salesperson in any dealship likes to talk monthly payment with you instead of price of the car, because they can manipulate the interest rate to screw you one way or the other. So don't pay attention to the monthly payment or the interest. Focus on the bottom line which is the price itself.

In summary, you want to bring the price of the car to as low as possible so you have a smaller borrowing principal. If you have decent credit, then talk about the interest rate after the price of the veihcle if you feel like. But like I pointed out, even they drop 3% for you, you only save about $40 a month, that is just worth about a tank of gas. So don't sweat too much over it. If your credit is not good enough and the dealer give you a little higher interest rate, you should still go ahead and get the car with the good price that you just negotiated to. You can always refinance with Capital One or Credit Union as soon as you find a better rate. (See footnote #2)

To EsCoBar1's problem, because you couldn't get the MAC $1k discount and then having trouble with the $500 Gerber rebate, then I suggest you NOT TO get the car for now unless it is already too late. We are talking $1,500 here. You will have to drop your interest rate WAY down to make up the difference. (remember what I said above, a 3% reduction in interest rate will only save you $40 month. You will take at least 3 years to recoup the $1,500. In 3 years, you may be able to refinance your veihcle twice if you want to).

This is my personal opinion, I could be wrong, but at 27 and I have done all the negotiation for the 6 veihcles that my family purhased since 1996. So far my theory has held up well for me.

Footnote: 1)
I have seen exception. My cousin finished negotiation and got a good price of a Scion Tc. Then by the time of signing paper, he was told the interest rate is 12.5% because of the poor credit. Well, I have to say that is my cousin's own fault because he is a chronically late payer for his credit cards and bills. So he is one of the exception that he needs to pay for his mistake. With such a high interest rate, he walked away from the deal because with his poor credit and no one to co-sign with, he did not have any hope to refinance with any better interest rate in a short period time.

2) in fact, you should get a pre-approval from Capital One or Credit Union before even visiting a dealer if you absolutely have a cap on your monthly payment.

 

RX8Union

Good advice: negotiate the best price on the car

Bad advice: don't worry about the interest rate


I bet the dealers love to see you coming with this attitude "Only $40 extra a month" on a 60 month loan is $2,400 - which is about the difference between INVOICE and MSRP on a 6mt 8 w/touring pack. So following your advice you deal them down to invoice, then give it all back when you sign a bloated finance deal.

If someone has very shaky credit, then they are limited in what they can do. Deal the price down as much as they can and hope the dealer can finance them at a decent rate.

For everyone else, ALWAYS (repeat after me) ALWAYS get pre-approved before you go to the dealership. Go through your bank or credit union, or someplace like Capital One online and lock in your rate. Then deal down the price of the car and when you get in the finance office tell them you are pre-approved and challenge them to beat the rate for a simple interest, non-baloon loan. If they can by a much lowe rate, then you go with the dealer's financing (but read the contract in detail so they don't hose you) . If they can't, you write them a check for the car against your loan and grab the keys and leave.

It is an "old wives tail" that hits on your credit report hurt your credit rating. If your credit is THAT bad you are not going to get a loan anyway - at least not under 10% or so.

Now with the MAC deal, the dealer sort of has you cornered - since they can mark up the MAC loan rate and you may not know it. But you want the $1k rebate - so you compare the refinance rate (usually higher than the new car rate) VS a new loan at cheaper money. It very well could be with only $1k in rebate money a 4.x% loan will be cheaper on $1k more than a higher rate MAC loan with the rebate. You have to run the numbers and see. If your bank/credit union will do the refinance at a new car rate, then do the MAC and take the rebate and right away refinance the car.

You don't play payments with a dealer ("how much do you want to pay a month?"), you don't ask for a discount off of MSRP (you work up from invoice or less), and you don't take the overpriced dealer finance package if you can help it.

Dennis

 

It's not an old wive's tale that they hurt your credit rating -- it's the truth.

The various credit reporting agencies allow you to use some "Score Simulators" to see what your score would look like if you did this or that. And one of them is a reduction of inquiries on your record. They're classified has 1-3, 3-5, 5-7, and 7+ inquiries -- 1-3 is normal, 3-5 takes away a handful or points, 5-7 a few more, and 7+ takes about 15 points off your record. An inquiry stays on your record for 12 months.

It is true that if you're that worried about the few points it does hurt, you've probably got bigger problems to worry about. Some of us just can't worry about inquiries. I have to move frequently for my job and every move is at least a couple hits -- you can bet on your apartment and the power company hitting your right away. Other utilities may or may not hit you. And then on top of that the simple fact that you changed addresses costs some more points because you're not "stable". Yeah, employed but moving, or refusing to move and being unemployed -- Hmmm.

Oh well. Now I'm just ranting.

 

I should have said "hurt your credit rating enough to matter for most folks".

Besides, you will get 1 extra hit to get pre-approved at your bank/CU/CapitalOne and just 1 hit at the dealership - so you will have ONE extra hit on your report. For most folks that will make NO difference in their score at all - and if it does it will be minimal.

I was not suggesting you get pre-approved for several loans - just use whoever gives you the best rate (probably your credit union if you have one, then Capital One, then finally your bank) and don't apply to the others. You can get pre-approved with MAC online before you ever go to the dealership, but I don't think they disclose your tier or the rate (the rate for sure, since the dealer may try to jack it up). Of course, if you do both of these at the same time one will have NO effect on the other, since they will not hit your report until after the bank/CU and MAC have given you the nod

Dennis

 

My dealership financed me through Bank of America without telling me. It didn't make much of a difference to me, as long as I pay the same amount, but I did feel a little angry because I know I would probably get a lower rate if I went through Bank of America myself. Either way, hope your situation works out. My rate is like 4.36% for 60 months with no down.

 

I guess I should clarify the part where I said Not to Worry about the interest rate and/or the $40 extra a month. I said that because I assume the buyer will be refinancing it with something else.

You need to understand a dealer MUST make money off you to stay in business. They do so by either making you pay more on the car but less on interest or less on the car but more on interest. I have heard people spending 6 hours in a dealership to negotiate. If you have to spend that much time negotiating, let's negotiate on the right topic (the price), not to waste too much energy on interest rate. If the price of the car is right, you'll always have the option to refinance it. Dealer needs to make money, so let them think they can make money off you on the interest. You can always get out the dealer's finance program by refinancing. However if your contract shows a higher price in $, your money is out of your pocket and won't comeback ever.

Last, like I mentioned, one should always have the back up plan to refinance your loan before you walk into the dealership unless you know for sure you can get the best financing program the dealer offers, such as 0% or 0.9%. Otherwsie, see my footnote #2. Get a pre-approval from a credit union, your bank or your home equity lender before shopping, so you know what you are good for.

I did sat down with the Mazda sales guy and told him "I don't care about the monthly payment, so just give me the price because I am paying it off with my in-law's home equity line". Ended up they offered me with a loan for 7.88%, not very good but guess what, this loan will be replaced by a equity line with only 4.5% later this month. Like I said, my family bought 6 cars in the last 10 years, 4 out of 6 were paid off almost immediately with home equity loan. So yes, I think the dealers were happy when I told them I don't care about interest, but they were only happy for maybe a week. I had loans from the dealer on 2 of the 6 cars. One of which we had the 0% financing, so couldn't get any better than that. The other one I got 5.6% for 6 years. This car is MR2Spyder, which wasn't part of any special financing program with Toyota, so 5.6% is actually quite reasonable considering the car was in such a short supply. I've had this 5.6% loan for 3 years now, yes I could refinance with the equity line for 4.5%. But my principal is fairly low now and 1% of difference is like $5 a month. So I'm just too lazy to deal with it.

Oh, I know I'm bias because I have access to home equity while not every body else can do the same. So I know my theory may be wrong and certainly cannot apply to everyone. But I just want to share my $0.02. :o

 

Well everything worked out pretty good. The salesman called me yesterday saying when i was going to pick up my car and i told him that the finance ppl were looking into the gerber rebate.....he said Dont Listen to Them its a Done Deal, they cant do anything... your cars buffed and ready to go with your full tank. Im not too worried anymore....everything on the contract is the same except the extra 1000 mac rebate that i wasnt "qualified for". I picked up my car yesterday and Im just happy i got it sitting on my driveway. I was going to refinance anyway as soon as i have a good credit built. Thanks for your guys help, Preciate It. Ill Post the pictures of my car as soon as I can!!!

 

Funny how you forget about the purchase once you have the vehicle. I will have to admit that my CarMax experience in buying a vehicle (which is how I got my RX-8) was the best experience I've ever had in a purchase.

Wait 6mth to a year and refi. You should drop at least 2% before it is really worth while. If you got the 6.69%, by the time you look to refiance, the bottom rate may be higher than that. In the eights and early nineties, 7% was a GOOD if not the BEST rate you could get. Now everyone complains about that. (Gosh my first car was 9.5%).

CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN!!! You will love that car. Now you need (as I do) some good advice about avoiding speeding tickets. The RX-8 lives for speed!!!

 

^^Lol yea i heard about that
Yea i have forgotten about the purchase...next time ill be much smarter. im just glad i got this car shopping over with.,I feel like i just finished takin the final exams after studying day and night for weeks. What a Relief.